Arrival of the Bees

Last Monday, 115 folks in Columbia waited at the Clemson extension office in Lexington to get their bees. These bees came in packages consisting of 3 pounds of worker bees and a queen. They are picked up from from an apiary in Georgia, and delivered by volunteers from the Mid-State Beekeepers Association.

Apparently, the delivery is always late, and this year was no exception. ETA for the packages was 5:30pm. I wanted to be toward the front of the line, so I got there at 3:00pm and was third.

The caravan didn't arrive until 9:15, and I didn't get home with my bees until 10:00.

Bees should be set in their hives at dusk. This minimizes the amount of time they have to fly off and gives the beekeeper enough light to see what they're doing.

As I didn't get home till after dark, I kept my 3 packages of bees in my daughters room on a towel (she wasn't staying in there at the time). I sprayed them occasionally with a 1:1 sugar syrup to keep them calm and fed. Here are a couple of photos of one of the packages.




The next day, around 7pm, I hived the packages.
I started by spraying the bees once again with sugar syrup to calm them down.


I then removed the piece of wood covering the top of the box so that I could remove the can of syrup which fed the hive during transport.



I then removed the cage holding the queen. There are corks at each end of her cage. One side has a candy barrier between the cage compartment and the opening. I will remove this cork and hang her in the middle of the hive facing upward using tape. The other bees will eat away the candy to release her. She's in there with a couple of workers which will also help her get out. I re-covered the hole in the top of the package using the removed scrap of wood.

I took about 3 frames out of the hive to make space for the new bees.


I then removed the wood covering the hole, and shook the bees into their hive.

I then slowly replaced the frames and hung the queen in the middle of the hive.




I reassembled the hive, and put some sugar water in their feeder (black and yellow canister at the bottom right of the hive). I left the emptied box at the entrance of hive to allow any stragglers left in the package to wander in.


I refilled the feeder every couple of days for a couple of weeks. I went back into the hive after a week to remove the empty queen cage. The queen was out, laying eggs, and the bees were beginning to store pollen, so everything is hunky dory so far.